by SA Magnusson
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me. I can tell Barden is here. Tell him to stop using that terrible spell on whomever he’s using it on and come talk with me.”
4
The woman backed away, closing the door. A surge of magic told me that she sealed it shut, though I suspected I’d be able to blow past it if it came down to it. I didn’t like the idea of using my magic like that, not when I came here for help and answers, but I also wasn’t afraid anymore of throwing around a little magic if it came down to it. Especially not here.
“Are you sure that’s the right strategy to take with her?”
“I’ve been abused by Dark Council mages enough times that I figure I can abuse them back a little,” I said.
Jen chuckled. “That is not like you.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt her.” Not much, at least. And considering how easily mages were able to restore themselves—at least for the most part—I wasn’t worried about her recovering.
We didn’t have to wait long. The sense of the paralytic paused, and then it stopped.
“He’s coming,” I said.
“You can feel him?”
“I can feel the spell he was using and that he stopped,” I said.
“What sort of terrible spell was he using?”
“I’m not sure what they call it, but I call it the paralytic. It’s one where I can’t move. I can’t talk. I worry that if they hold it too tightly, I won’t be able to breathe.” The memory of the spell was enough to cause my magic to begin to build, almost as if it seemed to know that it needed to defend me. There was no need for it, not unless I was attacked first, and even if the Dark Council decided to try to hold me with the paralytic again, my connection to magic was deeper now than it had been before and I thought I would be able to escape.
“See? I told you they’d have some way to bind me,” she said, a twinkle in her eye.
“Trust me, you wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It all depends on intent.”
She cut off when the door opened. Barden appeared, a bead of sweat running down his chest, his shirt unbuttoned far more than it needed to be. His hair was slicked back, moist with the sweat of his effort.
“Kate Michaels. And friend.” He tipped his head in a nod to both of us. “To what do I owe this great pleasure?”
“I have a few questions.”
“Indeed? Are they the kind of questions that involve my people and your grandparents?”
I shook my head. “They are the kind of question that involve magic, but I’m not sure which side.”
Barden frowned, his brow narrowing, and he nodded to me. “Step inside.”
He took a step back, sweeping his arm across him, waving for us to enter. I headed in, pulling on my magic, prepared for the possibility of anything. I didn’t think Barden would attack me, but there remained a part of myself that wasn’t entirely certain.
We followed Barden into the warehouse. Unlike the last time I’d been here when the warehouse was mostly empty, rows of desks lined each wall. Much of the center part of the warehouse had similar cubicles. It had begun to look more like an office and less like an empty and unused warehouse. I didn’t see anyone sitting at any of the workstations, but the floor was swept and there was no dust as there had been before. The air smelled clean, crisp, as if they had recently scrubbed it.
“A little upgrade?” I asked.
“Now that we don’t have to fear the mage council hounding us and forcing us to change locations, we can get a little more established than before.”
“Established doing what?”
Barden glanced over and flashed me a wide grin. “Is that an offer to join us?”
“I’m an ER doctor, not a mage.”
“You are an ER doctor and not a mage,” Barden said, his grin widening.
He guided us through the warehouse, winding around the rows of desks.
“What does he mean by that?” Jen whispered.
Barden’s slight stiffening to his back told me that he was listening. I expected nothing less from him. “Only that he knows my magic is different from his. And my grandparents.”
Barden glanced over his shoulder at me. “Is that why you’re here, Kate Michaels?”
I shook my head. “I doubt you have answers to that, either.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t. It would be to both of our benefit if I did. It is quite clear that your magic is much different than what I had expected.”
“And what had you expected?”
“Seeing as how you were able to handle the Sword of Shardon, I thought perhaps you might have a little bit of daemon blood within you, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.” He said daemon the same way Solera had.
How much did he actually know?
Barden was clever. He had built up a network of dark mages despite the fact that the mage council wanted nothing more than to prevent him from doing so. They had maintained a certain level of control and influence in spite of that. Someone like that would by necessity have gained knowledge.
Maybe I should have come to him with questions rather than to Solera.
“Sword of Shardon?”
“That is it’s name. A dangerous weapon, even when carried to this side of the Veil. On the other side, it is even more deadly.”
“Solera claims it will seek its master.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps that is true. Solera would know, much as she would know more about you. I thought I might discover what power you have, especially when you used a very particular type of magic when we faced the Great One,” Barden went on. “I could feel the stirrings of it, but nothing more than that. Had I more time, I might have been able to perform a spell that would have helped me elucidate the answer, but alas, we were a bit preoccupied.”
“Alas? Barden, where are you from?”
“Why, from France.”
I could practically feel Jen starting to swoon. “You don’t have much of an accent.”
“I’ve been in the country long enough that any accent I might have had has long since disappeared. Besides, there is advantage in masking one’s origin, wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Michaels?”
He glanced over, flashing another smile. I could only shake my head.
Barden was dangerous, but at the same time, he was something of an ally, though one who had his own agenda, and I wasn’t entirely certain where I fit within that. It was possible that he intended to use me, but then again, wasn’t that what I was doing by coming here? Didn’t I intend to use him—at least, use what he knew?
We reached the back hall, where there were rows of offices. The door to the computer room was closed, so I didn’t get to see what he might be working on, though the moment we stepped into the hallway, the surge of magic pressing along my spine intensified.
I didn’t think that it came from someone suddenly using more magic. More likely, it came from some spell he had wrapped around this space to mask the type of magic they were using in the first place.
If that were the case, then the fact that I’d been able to detect his paralytic at all was even more surprising. I shouldn’t have been able to pick up on it, certainly not as clearly as I had, not if he had himself shielded in some way.
He guided us back to his private office. It was nicer than my home, and when we stepped inside, a fire—or what appeared to be a fire, for I didn’t know if it was little more than a spell—crackled along one wall.
“Have a seat, Kate Michaels and friend,” he said, motioning toward the two leather sofas that faced each other near the fire. I knew from experience that they were incredibly comfortable, and if I made the mistake of relaxing too much, I would sink into them, probably falling asleep. The fire and the sofas would be too much to resist. I did not want to think about what Jen and Barden would do while I was out.
Jen followed me and took a seat next to me. A hint of a smile played across her lips, and I wondered if she was not taking this nearly as seriously as
she should. But then, she thought it was all part of a great game. When things had gotten dangerous, I had made certain to keep her away. I was responsible for her, especially when it came to the magical world, and I didn’t want anything to happen to her.
When we were situated, Barden took a seat across from me. “Now, if we aren’t here to discuss your innate abilities, and we aren’t here because you have some issue you would blame on my people, I am curious why we are here.”
There was no point dancing around the subject. That didn’t fit with Barden anyway. “Have you heard of any gangs that use magic?”
Barden pressed the tips of his fingers together, studying me. “Gangs? Some would argue that the mage council would constitute a gang.”
“And some would argue the Dark Council constitutes a gang,” I said.
“True enough, but I have the feeling that you aren’t referring to either of these councils.”
I shook my head. “I’m not. There is something else, though I’m not exactly sure what it is and if it’s anything to be concerned about.”
“Perhaps you should tell me what you are concerned about.”
I reached into my pocket, pulling out my phone, and flipped through the photos of the tattoos. Jen watched me, the accusation in her stare enough for me to start to flush.
“What is this?” Barden asked, leaning forward.
“These are the tattoos of a man who came into the hospital recently.”
“A magical attack?” Barden asked, glancing from my phone to me.
“Unless you consider gunshot wounds magical.”
“Sometimes,” Barden said.
Jen actually laughed.
“Both the shooter and the victim had tattoos like this on them,” I said, flipping through the series of symbols. The religious quotes and the crosses were less interesting to me, and I could tell from the way Barden looked at the pictures that they were less interesting to him, too. “The shooter used magic. He didn’t have significant power, but enough that I was aware of it, and enough so that he could put up a barrier to prevent a magical attack.”
“What sort of magical attack we talking about?”
“Mine,” I said.
Barden smiled. “I thought your post was to heal rather than harm,” he said.
“That’s the oath, but he had a gun and I had the sense that he and his friend were none too thrilled with the fact that we saved the victim.”
“So you beat him with magic,” Barden said. “Interesting. How many people were around when you did this?”
“A few.”
“And none saw what you did?”
“I held them with a spell that prevented them from moving first. If I hadn’t, at least one of them was reaching for a gun, and I wasn’t about to let there be a shooting at the hospital.”
Barden leaned back, still pressing his fingers together, but rather than looking down at the photos on my phone, he studied me with an interested expression. “Two spells at one time?” Barden asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Only that what you describe would require two spells at one time. That’s difficult enough for a trained mage, but you aren’t a trained mage, are you?”
“I’m not a mage, as we’ve already established,” I said.
Barden smiled. “No. You are not a mage. And yet, you do things that even a fully trained mage would find difficult. You do it without knowing that you should not, which tells me that you are powerful, even if your abilities did not.”
A hedge mage—or whatever I was.
“Do you recognize the tattoos or not?”
“Not tattoos. These are runes,” he said.
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“I don’t know, but they are markings that will provide the bearer with some power. They are given to the wearer by someone who understands magic.”
Maybe that was why they struck me as familiar.
“So they don’t have magic themselves?” Jen asked.
Barden looked over at her, smiling slightly. “Not naturally, no, and there are limits to how much power can be gifted through a rune. Most of the time, the rune gift is weak, little more than a taste of magic. Most runes have a specific purpose, which is why I suspect your shooter was able to carry a barrier so effectively against you.” He leaned forward, tapping on my phone until he reached the picture of the shooter’s tattoos. “This one,” he said, motioning toward a tattoo of a circle with a triangle within it. “This would indicate protection. Depending on how strong the mage who placed it had been, there might be enough power within such a rune to protect him.”
“What about the others?” I asked.
“I don’t recognize the others. I’m not necessarily a rune master, if you will. My expertise is a little darker, as you well know.”
“But you recognized one.”
“I recognized that they are runes. While that has some value, there is some limitation to how helpful that can be to you without knowing the nature of the remaining runes. Knowledge of runes has gone out of favor with mages, I’m afraid. Now it’s more about spell mastery.”
“Have you heard of anything like this?”
“Outside of the magical world? No. It would be unusual. A rune like this would be far more beneficial to someone with power of their own. They could store power within the marking and could draw it out if it came down to it. That is the true power of a rune.”
“What about these?”
“It’s possible that placing these has weakened the mage who did so. Again, I’m not a rune master, so anything I can tell you will be of limited value. As much as I might want to provide information to you, I am not an expert in such things.”
“Who are experts? Would my grandparents know something like this?”
“I have no idea what the mage council might know, but for this knowledge, it’s a little more arcane.”
“Solera?”
Barden started to smile. “Even if I thought you might be willing to go back to her, I wouldn’t suggest that. I know that the two of you have a little bad blood.”
“It’s not bad blood. It’s just—”
“It’s just that you used power from beyond the Veil, and you’ve been afraid to return to her.”
I wasn’t sure how much of that Barden had known. It seemed he knew all about it. “Can you blame me?”
Barden shook his head. “Blame? There is no blame, not when it comes to that one. She’s dangerous, and I think you’re lucky to have managed to have escaped from her for as long as you have.”
“I haven’t gone back,” I said.
“In that, I think that you’ve shown wisdom. Why return to the scene of such danger, especially when you’re dealing with someone like Solera, a woman who has power unlike any other on this side of the Veil?”
It was more than about having angered Solera. When I had been there before, I had acted out of instinct, not really knowing what I was doing. I’d created a seal around her pool and had borrowed power from it, taking from the other side of the Veil. Had I known what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t even have tried, but that was the benefit of ignorance. Not knowing what I was doing had allowed me to at least give it a try.
And I had angered Solera, a woman who had once been a powerful fae ruler, now exiled to this side of the Veil.
“Could she be responsible for what happened over the last few months?”
“You think Solera might have released the gorgon and the Great One?”
“If she’s exiled here, I don’t know why she wouldn’t.”
“She might have the necessary motivation, but she wouldn’t have the access. For one, the gorgon was summoned by my son, the book gifted to him with the knowledge of how to do so. She wouldn’t have been able to leave the island in order to do that.”
“She has people who serve her.”
“It’s possible,” Barden said carefully, “but I doubt she’s responsible for the Great One. In order to re
lease them from their prison, they needed the shifters. That is something Solera would not have been able to do.”
It had troubled me for a while. Everything that had happened had to be tied together in some way. There was too much taking place all in a short period of time—unless that was common, but I didn’t have the sense that it was.
“Are there other exiles like her?”
“I am not as well connected with the other side of the Veil as some to be able to answer that with any certainty.”
“But you suspect.”
“I suspect that those on the other side of the Veil use it in a similar fashion as we do.”
“How is that?”
“We use the Veil to separate us from the danger on the other side, and those from the other side likely use the Veil to separate from us.”
What if we were dealing with someone trying to break through again? We had already dealt with evidence of someone trying to influence the Veil, and it had happened multiple times. What if there was someone who continued to try to influence it?
Barden might not know the answer, but maybe Aron would. More likely than not, he would try to keep that information from me, wanting to protect me, but if there was anything we could come up with, we needed to know.
“If you think of anyone who might be using runes like this, would you let me know?”
“I can’t promise that I will spend any time trying to uncover the answer,” Barden said.
“I’m not asking you to send your people out searching for answers, all I’m asking is that if you come across anything…”
“If we come across anything, I will consider sharing. If that’s all, then I imagine you’ll be going?”
The way he said it was a little odd. “You don’t want us to be going?”
“You would be more than welcome to stay for dinner, but I suspect I already know the answer to such an invitation.”
The only reason he would offer that would be to try and study me more. I didn’t have any doubt about his motivation, and the strangest part was that I thought there might be some value in having Barden try to figure out what I might be. I’d already gone through mages, shifters, and one of the fae, which left only a few remaining places for me to go for answers. If it couldn’t come from the Dark Council, I might have to go to the vampires, though I didn’t have any connections within the vampire families. It wasn’t something I had asked Aron about, either, so I didn’t know if he did.
